Category Archives: walls

This might be my favorite room in the whole house. Never mind it needs furniture still. Never mind I say that with every section I get done. I can’t help it. I just love white paint, and sunlight bouncing off walls, and shiny clean floors, and pretty ceilings. It just sort of shocks your eyeballs when your eyes are used to seeing this room… …And then one day you see this room instead. Nothing special to see here, just some paint and polyurethane. And elbow grease. Lots of elbow grease. Worth it? Oh, I think so! The furniture isn’t all necessarily staying. I just threw some pieces in here to get an idea of how much room I had to work with. I’m still searching high and low for a bed that will fit this room. I spent all day Saturday searching every thrift store, garage sale and antique store in … Continue reading →

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about painting wood paneling lately. I figured it would probably be better to address all the questions in one post. This is a bit of an updated re-run from a post I did on my old blog about this, so sorry if this is old news to you readers who have been around for a while. First off, wood paneling is an entirely different beast than drywall. If you think you are going to knock it out in an afternoon, you are going to be sadly disappointed. Ask me how I know that. Just get it out of your head before you start, and all will be well with the world. Before you begin browsing the paint isle, you’ll have to have some bonding time with a rag and some TSP. Depending on how shellacked and dirty your walls are, you may … Continue reading →

It will look pretty, that’s what! Brick inside a house brings a rustic and warm feel with it that I just love. The trouble is, not all brick is lovely to look at. Some of it can be down right ugly! If you find yourself afflicted with generally unattractive brick, paint is a simple way to improve it. I’m going to give you two examples of this, one of fake brick, the second of real brick. My work shop walls had some troubling issues, termite damage for one, and ugliness for another. I decided I wanted a nice statement wall on one end of the room, so we procured some fake brick paneling from the hardware store. I didn’t think it was all that nice of a color, or the slightest bit realistic looking, but I had a plan. First, I filled in the grout with white paint, which was … Continue reading →

So, you’ve got a wall to paint. Would you like to know how save a whole bunch of money and time painting that wall? If you are going to all the bother of painting a wall yourself instead of hiring it out, I bet its a topic you’d find interesting. One simple step can save you money and time, maybe even millions if you paint walls as much as I do! (exaggerating slightly) Get rid of the painters tape! You don’t need it, you really don’t! You don’t have to be neat, or artistically inclined to paint without tape. I can make a monstrous mess out of just about any task known to man, and I can’t draw a stick figure to save my life, much less paint one! I was scared to try it myself, but necessity is the mother of all adventurous efforts…or something like that. See, I’ve … Continue reading →

Once I had craft room walls that looked like this. Well, actually, this is after I tore off termite infested paneling, so this is actually an improvement to the original. After much (and I do mean much!) indecision on what to do with the walls, they now look like this. I had a few miss steps with this wall (as in, I painted three times!), because I started out with intention of hiding the ugly imperfections of the cinder blocks. In the end, I found that by high lighting what I was trying to hide, the grout lines, I truly loved the uniqueness of the wall. Since then, I’ve been tempted to repaint it yet again, to make a solid background color for pictures. I just can’t pursued myself to do it, because really, who does like to paint a wall FOUR times! Ha, no really, the reason I haven’t repainted … Continue reading →

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Welcome to chapter37! I'm Abby, the face behind the blog, and I'm so glad you are here! I call myself mom to four beautiful stories being written...two typical girls full of sparkles and giggles, one former preemie winning her battles one at a time, and a little man living life with gusto despite kidney failure and liver cancer. I write about the kids, the house, and all the mess in between. I hold the opinion that anything in life can be handled with God, a paint brush and a healthy sense of humor!